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Livi | A New Way to Experience Plants

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Livi | A New Way to Experience Plants

We believe that by reimagining the most ordinary everyday products in innovative ways, we can create treasured experiences that enhance our environment and impact our well-being. That is why we created Livi (patentpending)—a colorful creature that reimagines the way we experience and relate to our plants.
Livi is a versatile portable planter for virtually any vertical surface.

Livi does not require any assembly and is ready to attach to a window (or other surface) in your home or office with a gentle push. Inspired by nature, Livi’s micro-suction palms are made of an innovative nanotechnology material that is able to bond with smooth surfaces repeatedly, including windows!

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Why Do We Care about Livi ?

We believe that many people view plants as static decorations, relegated to the corner of a room, table, or window ledge. We want to change this perception. By reimagining the commonplace planter as a playful animated creature, we sought to create a more engaging and pleasurable experience with plants and flowers. Although Livi may be small and compact, it can have a big impact by enhancing the way we live, work, and play.

A Green Lifestyle & Bringing Outside in

Livi makes it possible to grow our favorite plants virtually everywhere. No more worries about whether indoor light is too dim or your home lacks window ledges for plants. Simply stick Livi to your window and bring the natural world inside!

How does it work? So Easy and Playful.

Remove the protective film from Livi’s palms (micro-suction)

1-Peel off the protection film from micro-suction pads

Simply place a size-appropriate planter pot inside Livi. (Alternatively, you can fill Livi with nutrient-rich soil and then directly plant your flowers, herbs or greenery within.)

We aspired to design a new experience with plants. To realize our vision we undertook an interdisciplinary approach involving product design, user experience design, as well as landscape and architecture design. We actively sought to answer essential questions: What is a planter now vs. what a planter could be? How can a planter change our appreciation of plants and our behaviors toward them? How could a planter turn a plant into something more consequential? These questions are not trivial. They provided a starting point for rethinking the role of both plant and planter in our everyday lives.

In designing a prototype, we made hundreds of sketches and produced 32 different design iterations of Livi. Eventually, we 3D printed several dozen prototypes and carefully painted them to study color variations.

Since we believe that great design is a shared, participatory experience between designers and users, we approached this human-centered design strategy very seriously. We invited many different groups of people to engage with our prototypes for several weeks, and encouraged them to provide feedback throughout the process. Although the end-goal is the design of a great product, we are just as interested in enhancing people's lives at home or in the workplace by engaging with greenery through Livi.

Livi can hold a variety of plants and has a capacity of up to 10oz (17.5 cubicinches, 275cc), which allows for planting a variety of greenery and herbs, or displaying your favorite flowers. You can also simply insert a small planter pot directly in Livi.

Manufacturing

We are thrilled with all the possibilities Livi can offer. Livi’s design involves complex curvature forms and geometry. We spent literally hundreds of hours consulting with designers, technicians, and manufacturers from North America, Europe, and Asia for the smoothest and best manufacturing results. We sent out digital models and 3D printed prototypes to manufacturers, and either met them face-to-face or communicated with them to review the entire process. The manufacturing process involves an injection molding technique that uses a resin (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) that is 100% recyclable. The process includes:

Mold design

Mold tooling

Sample production

Production Run

Assembly (attaching microsuction pads on livi’s palms).

After a great deal of research, we are excited to share that we have partnered with a great manufacturer, and are passionately waiting to start the process!

Microscution Pads:

Livi's palms are made of micro-suction pads using an innovative nanotechnology process developed in Japan the final assembly will be in California.

Livi sticks to smooth, even, clean, and dry surface. Micro-suction pads function like suction cups, but at the microscopic level. Micro-suction tapes have hundreds of microscopic air pockets that create a vacuum once they are pressed against smooth surfaces, creating a bond. That’s why it’s so important to clean the surface prior to affixing Livi so that dirt/dust particles do not affect the micro-suction pads. When removing Livi from surfaces, please do so gently since rapid removal may result in tearing and damaging the micro-suction pads—thus weakening the bonding power of Livi’s pads. Do not use Livi in areas that are wet and too humid (bathrooms or sauna) because microscopic water particles will lower or remove its adsorption force. In case you want to stick Livi to a new surface, we do recommend cleaning both the new surface and the pads by wiping the micro-suction off with a damp cloth to remove the dust and let it completely dry. Once dry, the suction power will be restored. If the micro-suction pads are not well maintained (get dirty, absorb dust particles, or tear due to rapid removal from surfaces), it loses its function and won't re-adhere to surfaces properly and there is a chance that Livi will drop from the surface. We have tested micro-suction pads on our own prototypes for several months and those that are well-maintained are functioning properly. We have not tested the micro-suction tape beyond 12 months and have relied on the the manufacturer/supplier specifications. Our supply of micro-suction pads come with a protection film, and since we won't remove the film we will not test them individually, so we don't guarantee any possible malfunction resulting from micro-suction pads.

Responsible Manufacturing:

Livi is committed to social and environmental sustainability. We are pleased to say that the entire manufacturing process is socially responsible, resulting in a resin material that is also fully recyclable!

About Us

The Livi team is dedicated to developing new ways in which we as humans can incorporate plants and ecological systems into the built environment. Livi is our pet project, which emerged from an afternoon brain-storming session and made us all excited.

We share passion for our new pet project, Livi. We aim to reimagine the way the humans interact with the greenery and plants in the built environment and cities.

Hooman Koliji

Hooman is an architect, landscape designer, and educator. He is passionate about exploring imaginative solutions for critical problems. His work on Ecological Design Thinking has yielded several innovative design research projects.

Parsa Shirazi

Parsa is a designer and experienced architect. After years of practicing architecture, graphic design, and teaching, Parsa pursued User Experience Design (UX) and Interaction Design and poured all of his experience and passion into the user experience.

Yildirim Yazgaranikan

Yildirim is a designer with a background in architecture, product design, and technology. He is passionate about finding intelligent ways to solve complex problems.

Mandana Parvinian

Mandana is a landscape designer and an architect based in San Francisco Bay Area. She is interested in creating meaningful and well-crafted design.

You can also use Livi as vase and put your flowers on your window

Risks and challenges

If we are funded successfully, we expect a smooth production process. It must be said, however, that manufacturing in large scale has the potential to present some inherent challenges. A critical point in our process is the Design for Mold (DFM) stage, which sometimes requires minor design modifications to ensure manufacturability and quality production. In fact, we made several design revisions to our initial production run to address "undercut" areas and the “side pulling action” of the mold during the injection molding process. Accordingly, we addressed these issues during our “pre-DRM phase.”

Also, we wanted to guarantee that post-injection molding would not result in any deformation of Livi’s hands or legs. Our manufacturing partner solved this issue by using specialized resins with additives, as well as increasing the cycle time to eliminate that risk. With respect to this issue, we do not foresee any major problems ahead; we are also confident that any minor issues that might arise during the manufacturing process can be easily mitigated.

Color mixing in plastic injection mold is a challenge, but always achievable. Manufacturers simply mix color pigments to achieve the desired hue. Our manufacturing partner will use the Pantone color code to match production colors to our design specifications. Prior to full production we will receive several sample color runs to review and approve, thereby ensuring that the final colors will match to color selection.

We feel confident in stating that we have minimized possible risks by consulting with manufacturing experts and our manufacturing partner through numerous back-and-forth exchanges throughout the design and manufacturing process.

In summary, we feel that we are well on our way to the beginning of an exciting and profitable adventure with Livi!